Thursday, November 10, 2016

Raipur: Neither AEMC members nor AAI authorities in past few years did not think of bring in
assistance of Ornithologists to track patterns of these birds and suggest measures to tackle it

Irrespective of the altitude, aircrafts always face the risk of bird hits during landing and take-off, from the ground flying birds, sources in Airports Authority of India averred

The AAI recently approved the purchase of ‘Zon Bird Scare Guns’ for Raipur Airport, a tech-approach to shoo the birds away from the airport premises.

In the absence of any professional approach, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) is trying to minimize the bird-hit threat at Raipur Airport by relying on conventional methods such as sirens, fire crackers bursting, hooter-mounted jeeps and deploying bird chasers. Quite strangely, neither Airfield Environment Management Committee (AEMC) members nor AAI authorities in past few years gave a thought to bring in the assistance of Ornithologists to track the patterns of these birds, study their activity and suggest measures to mitigate the threat they pose to the aviation security at Raipur airport.
Most importantly, the conventional method of bird scaring by bursting fire crackers was banned by Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) at 51 airports in the country. The ban on crackers came into force after officials investigating into a case had found firecrackers in an aircraft in Kerala way back in 2010. Following this, the Ministry of Home Affair had put a ban on the use of crackers at airports, but this practice is still followed at Raipur Airport.
10/11/16 Hitavada